Friday, May 16, 2014

Mother launches online campaign to defend 3-year-old son from circumcision

A Florida woman has successfully convinced a state
appeals court to stop the father of her three-year-old son from having
their child circumcised.

The Court of Appeals for Florida’s fourth district this week
granted a request made by the boy’s mother, Heather Hironimus of
Boynton Beach, in which she asked for justices to stay an earlier
ruling ordering her son to be circumcised.

Hironimus and the boy’s father, Dennis Nebus of Boca Raton, had
the child in October 2010 and more than a year later entered into
a legally-binding parenting agreement; Hironimus and Nebus never
married.

A provision included in that contract referenced in recent court
proceedings affirmed that Nebus was responsible for scheduling
and taking their son to be circumcised, and would pay for any and
all costs associated with the procedure. Hironimus, the contract
continued, agreed to “timely execute any and all documents
reasonably necessary to effectuate the circumcision” of the
child.

According to a court order issued earlier this month, Hironimus
claimed in recent testimony that she believes the procedure is
not medically necessary and that her son risks dying as a result
of the general anesthesia used. The court said, however, that the
mother “expressed no other reason for now objecting to the
procedure to which she’d already agreed,” and on May 9 ruled
“there is no reason why the parties should not be held to the
terms of their Agreed Parenting Plan.” Hironimus was in turn
told that she could be held in contempt for not allowing Nebus to
arrange for the procedure.

"My client's position is he's 3-and-a-half," attorney
Taryn G. Sinatra told the court, according to Local10.com. "There's no medical reason
to do it."
One day after the court gave Nebus the go ahead, however,
Hironimus made a passionate plea for help on an online
crowdfunding site where she hosted a campaign titled, aptly,
“Save My Son from Circumcision.”

“My son is currently being court ordered to undergo a
medically unnecessary cosmetic circumcision because that is what
his dad wants,” she wrote, adding that the ruling was made
by a judge she claims to be “also very
pro-circumcision.”“My attorney and I are going to be appealing this decision as
neither of us believe it should be a decision left to anyone
other than my son, who is three-and-a-half and fully aware. As a
stay at home mom, I do not have the funding to be able to fully
accomplish this on my own. I am pleading with fellow
intactavists, parents and all others to help me save my son, his
foreskin, his rights and hopefully other children from allowing
the ‘system’ to make these decisions,” Hironimus added on
her GoFundMe page.

Nevertheless, Hironimus acknowledged that she had, in fact,
signed a legal document approving the procedure — something she
said she blamed on ignorance with regards to circumcision.

“Unfortunately at that time I was not educated on
circumcisions. I was always led to believe that being circumcised
was the right decision for my son and that it was the ‘normal’
thing to do,” she wrote.

Her plea apparently attracted the support of other
“intactavists,” or people who oppose such procedures — in six
days, the Save My Son from Circumcision campaigned raised over
$5,000, and now she plans on using that money to defend her son’s
foreskin before an appellate court since Tuesday’s order only
stays the earlier ruling approving the father’s plans
“pending further order.”
In 2011, an effort to ban circumcision in California led by
other intactavists almost landed the measure on the ballot, and a
San Diego activist and artist made waves for the movement by
releasing a web comic called Foreskin Man. Publication of that
comic, however, caused an outcry among the state’s Jewish
population, including by some who went as far as to call the
comic “disgusting.” Before the bill was aborted,
California Jews and Muslims alike waged a campaign to keep a
circumcision ban from being enacted.

"As Jews, we take the threat of banning circumcision
personally,” Jeremy Benjamin, who sued the state to keep the
ban from materializing, said in 2011. “This measure singles us out,
along with the Muslim community, as illegitimate and unwanted in
our own city."